Drinking for Scotland, legal drug dealers and our country’s shame

I gave up drinking for 31 days, once. Made a radio programme out of it. And then I went back to my Friday night red wine, my couple of whiskies a week, my beer and skittles. Without the skittles..

The occasional binge, too, in the sense of combining beer, wine and whisky in doses calculated to leave me slumped in an armchair, dribbling and snoring while Jools Holland once again elbows his mediocre piano into some hapless, desperate performer’s arrangement. Later. And later, and later, and later…

But in Caledonian terms, my binges do disservice to the word. I am, to put it mildly, a lightweight these days when it comes to booze. I hate, always hated being drunk, and now, when I find myself in social gatherings where alcohol is being taken, I usually safeguard my exit route before even beginning to imbibe. I ensure there’s a way home, or out, and when the boredom begins to seep through, when dehydration starts to sandpaper the thrapple, I make my excuses and leave. Or switch to Ribena.

I hang out with connoisseurs, sometimes. People who drink professionally, or who, to be more precise, describe whiskies for a living. Indeed, I have done this myself, though I always have to fight back the giggles, as there’s something essentially ridiculous about the striving to differentiate single malts, one from Glen t’other. Yes, they are different, but in the way grades of heroin and cocaine are different. The taste is not the point of whisky. It’s meant to do a job on you, enliven, inebriate, dull, destroy. Like Keith Richards’ obsessive hailing of Merck pharmaceutical ‘fluffy’ cocaine in his recent autobiography. Push comes to sniff, dirty lumps of Bolivian or Columbian crack or factory-made Swiss snow are drugs that deliver the same message to heart, brain and body. Whisky is a delivery vehicle for alcohol.

They are, for the most part, lovely folk, the dope dealers of the whisky trade. They are more than respectable, occasionally hilarious, often charming. It’s an area of Scottish life absolutely awash with money, and the marketing of uisge beatha has always been cutting edge, from the days of Tommy Dewar onwards. Doubtless he would have been happy to be called a brand ambassador. Maybe not an evangelist.

Whisky is now so suffused with lore, mythology tall tales, anal-retentive male compulsions and downright bullshit that you’d think it was some kind of art. It’s not. It’s a drug, disguised for its many niche and mass markets in the form of a social badge, a collector’s trophy, a mind-blowing display of wealth (silver, gold, platinum and diamonds encrusting a bottle? You got it) a signifier of coolness, of belonging.

Expertise has become the latest marketing tool. Whisky clubs and societies have sprung up worldwide, whisky festivals (I admit it. I participate. I talk phenols and oakiness, caramel and esters, washbacks and mash tuns. I judge whisky competitions, for goodness’ sake) see wise heads, young and old, slurping and nodding over rarities in hotel function suites. Notes are taken, words are slurred, stairs fallen down. A great deal of fun is had. Money changes hands. Lots and lots of money. Mantras? Excess is good. Greed is good. throw the cork away. Moderation is for sissies.

Elsewhere, the same companies slosh alcopops and factory-made sweet spirits into underage bellies. industrial scale drinking is encouraged at the annual alcofest-with-music that is Pee in the Dark, or T in the Park. Scotland goes out on a Friday and gets rat-arsed, crashes cars, kills pedestrians, freezes to death in a park. Slashes, burns, abuses, fights, smashes, damages. Does the same again on Saturday. Maybe a a few Smirnoff Ices on a Sunday to ease the way back into work on a Monday. Or just miss Monday out, why not? Internationally, countries in Africa, Asia and the Americas are targeted. Drink this, it’ll make you…richer, more attractive, it’ll make you belong. One glass makes you bigger, one glass make you small…

Hey, let’s not forget the weans. Foetal alcohol syndrome, anyone? Och, how can you have sex anyway if you aren’t pished? Brain damage. Shrinkage. Fits. The meaningless rubbish that’s sold only to mess you up, like Carlsberg Special, originally brewed specifically for Winston Churchill’s visit to Denmark after the war, now the tipple of choice for oblivion merchants everywhere.

Tomorrow, the Scottish Parliament will vote on party political lines and eradicate the proposed bill that would set a minimum price for alcohol in Scotland. Spurious arguments will be advanced that raising the price of a unit of rotgut cider will cause terrible damage to the economy, and won’t stop folk boozing unwisely anyway. Education is all. have a wee dram. Smell the history, the geography, the culture.

I don’t believe that for a moment. I am afraid that the drug dealers have once again flexed their considerable muscle and quashed the first serious attempt to tackle the shame that is Scotland’s relationship with alcohol. Gutless, ignorant, hidebound politicians have cowered before them.

So. That’s that, then. Might as well go out and get pished, eh? Just remember this salient fact: Two single malts: that’s enough to destroy your ability to appreciate their quality. After that, you might as well switch to Old Gumripper or Glen Haemorrhage. Slainte!

Squalor, celebration and branding: Tennents, Live Nation, mud and manure

Our friend who had worked in refugee camps across the world was quite definite: “The camps tend to be organised, and for survival, they’re kept clean. They’re nothing like as bad as this.”

‘This’ being the T in the Park campsite on the Friday afternoon: tents pitched on top of one another, some 40,000 people living it larger than large. And dirtier than dirty. Despite the much-vaunted ‘Citizen T’ attempt to make folk more litter-aware, waste from toilet paper to plastic bags to lager tins was simply dumped on what had once been grass. Oh, and the overwhelming aroma of human ordure hung in the damp air, mingling with the eternal niff of Balado: rotting poultry waste from the industrial hen  houses around the site.

The dirt and waste at T in the Park, the smell, the drugs, the incredible binge drinking: no-one talks about it, except in jocular terms (“see the joyful campers cavorting in the mud! It IS just mud…isn’t it?”). Media coverage, generally, is  utterly in thrall to Tennents and the event organisers, partly because all hacks need accreditation, partly because the whole thing is so big every dying media organisation wants or needs to hang onto its demographic coat tails. T covers the mudfront. Tennents (whose lager is generally regarded as a bit of a joke the rest of the year) get coverage other brands can only dream about, including network TV with their name  on every broadcast. On the BBC, no less. And the tragic elements – this year, one death, two stabbings, a sexual assault – drift away on the sweet wind of happy memories, and thoughts of next year.

And yet so many love it so much. For some, it’s their only holiday, an annual transformative experience. A baptism by mud, noise and alcohol, a relaxation of all the rules by which you can be reborn into some kind of coping with the dreadful tedium of normal life.

I was only there this year for the Friday and a few brief moments on Saturday, before being whisked to hospital with excruciating stomach pain (I’ll blog about my splendid experiences at Glasgow’s Western Infirmary in a few days). But this was my fifth T, and wet or dry, dirty or muddy, my feelings are still the same. It’s no place for the likes of me.

This was -maybe – the last time I’ll have to to attend in a parental capacity – after this year, all the offspring are old enough to take it on themselves – and it’s a relief.  Although there’s much great music to enjoy, T is not about individual appreciation of artistic endeavour. It’s about being there, being part of the herd, about The Event. On one level, it’s about money, and  branding; on another, it’s about being  branded: You went to T in the Park. You got drunk. You took weird drugs. You had sex in a tent. You met people from outlandish places like Wick and Greenock. You didn’t sleep. You saw famous acts off YouTube like JayZ, Eminem, Muse, Kasabian. Or at least, you  heard them in the distance. You survived. You were there. It was fantastic.

It’s for the young, basically. Though the elderly were there, too, grimly protecting offspring, goggling at the vast amounts of male public pissing, trying desperately to find a seat. Or pretending that they too were still usefully youthful.

It’s for the young if you’re doing the downmarket camping thing, which is the full-on T-wading-through-shite experience. The elderly and the children should travel back and forth on day tickets, sleeping in proper beds. Remember it’s only an hour from Glasgow. Or try The Residence – brutally expensive luxury camping,  for people who actually want to sleep at night; that’s what we did this year. Good pizza, proper showers, clean toilets, nice Cava, pleasant yurt. Same mud. Privileged access to the VIP hospitality area, a secret access track.We paid the premium and it was worth it.

Our kids absolutely loved the whole damn thing. Their mum, fortunately, was able to oversee both her husband’s hospitalization and the weans’ festivities. T is the centre of their year, and I know Martha (16) will wear her wristband until it rots, or next year’s festival comes along. The wet, the toilets, the mud, the sense , somehow, of a conspiracy by the organisers to create an illusion of  ‘the festival’, as defined by 1970s Glastonbury – love, peace happiness, good vibes –  when this is a multinational money-making concern (£13 million a year), owned by the extraordinary Live Nation behemoth which emanated originally from Clear Channel and, worryingly, possesses almost the entire world of entertainment, from Nickelback to U2 to King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, and even part of glorious Glasto – none of that mattters.

For the bairns, T in the Park is a glorious festival of  belonging, of great music, of growing self reliance and survival. For me, the squalor, the filth, my aching feet and the awful smell of chicken farming can’t be overcome.

Face it, I’m too old for this. Next year, I’ll watch it on telly with some cold beer. It won’t be Tennents.

And for an, ahem, more robust view of the whole thing, why not try Limmy?